Some breeders have noticed that the masked color can influence the nuance of red of the cat. This means that a red cat can mask black, chocolate or cinnamon, and a cream cat can mask blue, lilac, and fawn. When a cat is red, the Orange gene masks the black-based gene of the cat, which could be the locus B, b, or bl. You can now easily understand that it’s theoretically impossible, for a genetic reason, to have a male tortie cat. These genes are codominant, so the female cat is both red and black, which is what we call a tortie. Xo XO: the female has both the not orange and orange gene. Xo Xo: the female has two times the 'not orange' gene and so she has a black-based color XO XO: the female has two times the orange gene and so she has an orange-based color Xo Y: the male has the "not orange" gene and so he has a black-based color.įemales have two X chromosomes, and so there are three possible combinations: XO Y: the male has the orange gene and so he has an orange-based color (red or cream) As the orange gene is on the X chromosome, if the cat is a male there are only two possibilities: The sex chromosomes of a male cat are XY. The orange gene is sex-linked: the gene is, in fact, situated on the X chromosome, and that explains why almost all tortoiseshells are female! We will talk about an exception to this rule in the next paragraph. The red color is the expression of the orange gene: this gene causes the transformation of black pigments into orange pigments in the hairs of the cat.If a cat carries the orange gene, we'll denote with "O" its allele if it carries the "not orange" gene, we will denote its allele with a lower-case "o". Note: in this part, I will dive into the genetics behind the tortie color: I advise that you read first the introduction to genetics in this article. Tortie and red cats genetics Tortie cats are almost all female This shouldn’t be confused with a chimera. It’s quite common for torties to have a “split face”: one side of their face is red and the other one is black. Namely black tortie (or black and red), blue tortie (also called dilute tortie or blue and cream), chocolate tortie (or chocolate and red), lilac tortie (or lilac and cream), cinnamon tortie (or cinnamon and red), and fawn tortie (or fawn and cream). There are 6 different kinds of torties, one for each black-based color. If the black-based color is diluted, the red-based color associated with it will be "diluted red", which is the cream color. For example, the classic tortie, or black tortie, can also be called "black and red". Torties, also known as tortoiseshells, got their name because of the black tortie's similarity with the colors of the shell of a tortoise.Ī tortie cat has both a black-based color and a red-based color. Note: Before reading this article, I recommend that you read the first article of the series on solid cat colors, as some of the genetic explanations are useful to understand this article. What's the color of your cat? To answer this question, in this second article of the series on cat coats we are going to talk of torties and red cats, the genetics behind these colors, and some prejudice on these colors!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |